Rick Holmes: The problem with President Barack Obama

Rick Holmes

Monday

Jul 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 30, 2012 at 2:52 AM

For some of us who spend too much time arguing about politics, defending Barack Obama is a full-time job. From the beginning, the attacks on him have been so intense that it’s been all we can do to bat down the most outrageous ones. We’ve become knee-jerk defenders, and somehow we never get around to airing our own complaints about the president.

For some of us who spend too much time arguing about politics, defending Barack Obama is a full-time job.

From the beginning, the attacks on him have been so intense that it’s been all we can do to bat down the most outrageous ones. We’ve become knee-jerk defenders, and somehow we never get around to airing our own complaints about the president.

And, yes –– as I’ve answered on the rare occasions when asked if there’s anything I don’t like about Obama –– I do have complaints.

I have complaints about specific policies. Not only is Guantanamo still open, but the national security state has never been more expensive or more intrusive in the lives of citizens. U.S. mercenaries and drones have expanded the battlefield and removed all restraints on the projection of military force.

Obama has resisted opportunities to abandon long-discredited policies. The waning of the Castro era promises great changes in Cuba, but Obama still clings to John F. Kennedy’s embargo.

And, after early signals that he’s open to change, Obama is still waging Richard Nixon’s war on drugs. The bloodshed in Mexico, the pleas of Latin American leaders and changing attitudes in the U.S. –– even Republican heartthrob Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey recently pronounced the war on drugs “a failure” –– provide openings for a change in course.

But Obama keeps throwing military force at drug traffickers around the world, not to mention the Fast and Furious arsenal he sent to Mexico’s drug lords. And he keeps attacking the most sympathetic drug users at home. This month, the Justice Department took steps to shut down California’s largest medical marijuana dispensary, even as voters in 17 states have legalized medical cannabis, with more on the way.

A larger complaint: Obama is a Wall Street Democrat. He surrounded himself with advisors who confuse the state of the markets with the state of the economy. So they bailed out the big banks without asking anything in return: not the liquidation of toxic assets, not mortgage relief, not loans for small businesses. Nor did Obama get the big banks to agree to refrain from lobbying the financial regulation bill, which they weakened in Congress and are now strangling in its cradle.

America has problems much bigger than the small-bore politics that obsesses the Washington elite. The nation’s middle class has been losing ground for 30 years. We have a debt crisis, an entitlement crisis, an immigration crisis and a climate crisis. We’ve got an economy that cannot sustain a recovery and that won’t heal by itself. The political system is so corrupted by big money and so paralyzed by partisanship that it cannot respond to desperate needs.

But in the face of grave challenges, Obama has chosen to play small-ball. For all his lofty rhetoric, the impossibly high expectations of his supporters –– the Nobel Committee did him no favors –– and the hysterical exaggerations of his opponents, Obama has governed as a centrist, an incrementalist, with a vision as narrow as the small minds that run Congress.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Early on, even as others billed his potential to be a “transformative president,” Obama signaled that persistence was among his strongest qualities, and that he would be happy to compromise on a half-loaf today and come back for the other half tomorrow.

That worked for awhile. Obama stocked his pantry with half-loaves in his first two years, while Democrats had a bare majority in Congress. But as he got bogged down in small provisions of sprawling legislation, he grew disconnected from the growing hunger among voters for larger changes.

The enthusiastic new voters whose energy swept him into office got disillusioned and bored. The tea party movement caught Obama flat-footed. Instead of expressing a broad vision and leading the charge against the status quo, he was lost in the legislative weeds, easily branded as the problem, not the solution.

For two years, Obama figured that if he got the policies right –– or as right as he could get them given the political difficulties involved –– the voters would reward him. He moved the ball up the field, a few yards at a time.

But he got to the 50-yard line and was stopped by the mid-term elections. The Republicans took the House, and made it clear there would be no more half-loaves for this president.

In retrospect, it might have been better had Obama aimed higher in those first two years, even if he suffered big defeats. He should have made himself the master of a new Democratic Party, rather than the junior partner of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. He might have gone into the mid-terms with the goal of strengthening his mandate instead of struggling, unsuccessfully, to save his working majority.

We’ve had a string of 51-percent presidents –– George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, now Obama –– whose election victories came with a two-year shelf life. You can’t become a transformative president with close election victories that produce divided governments, and that’s what Obama is looking at in November.

None of this is an argument for Mitt Romney. I’m hard-pressed to think of a single policy area where he wouldn’t take us in the wrong direction. But that’s a topic for another day.

There’s also a strong case to be made for Obama. Some of those half-loaves are pretty substantial, and his experience has made him a better leader. That’s fodder for another column as well.

My point today is that limited ambitions and well-intentioned compromises aren’t what the country needs, and they won’t deliver the mandate Obama needs to succeed in a second term –– or even win a second term.

For Barack Obama, the time has come to go big, or go home.

Rick Holmes, opinion editor for the Daily News in Massachusetts, blogs at Holmes & Co. (http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/holmesandco). He can be reached at rholmes@wickedlocal.com.

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